


Signs Of A Life Lived

by Persephone_Van_Dyke



Series: Reunion Trilogy [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-25
Updated: 2011-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 18:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone_Van_Dyke/pseuds/Persephone_Van_Dyke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River and Jack discuss past experiences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Signs Of A Life Lived

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [kink_bingo prompt](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) 'Scars.
> 
> Small spoilers for _Exit Wounds_
> 
> Not my characters, not making any money from this.

'I don't scar anymore.'

He says it regretfully, as if he'd given up smoking but still missed the consoling first drag.

'Not since – well, y'know.'

She nods. She knows where he's been for the last eighteen – or, from his persepctive, 2000-odd – years. They ran into each other again in a bar while he was planet-hopping as far from Earth as he could. He wouldn't have remembered her, but she'd come up to him, called him by his old name, and taken him home.

'Cause I always found scars, kind of – erotic – don't you think?'

'That and everything else in the universe,' she mocked, smiling gently as she raised a glass of Chronofin 20-year-old whisky to her lips.

Same bar as before, after a long interval. Every time he was passing through the system, he called her. This time - four month since they last met - she had a fresh mark on her hand, from a carelessly-handled piece of 28th century Venusian glassware. This set them talking about scars.

'I mean – as markers of experience. Signs of a life lived. I stopped scarring when I stopped dying – they just fade out now, I heal up, nothing to show for any of it. A death, a wound, a fucking papercut – nothing marks me. It feels like I'm – not really experiencing it all, y'know?'

'Yes.'  She put down her drink, eyes distancing.  'I used to have a lover who had a scar shaped exactly like crescent moon on zir back. It was beautiful. From some skin-sample thing ze had as a kid. But it was perfect – it looked like it was _meant_ to be there. I was so in love with – that one aspect of zim. And a few others.' She smiled reminiscently.

'Yeah, that's what I mean,' the man said. 'Just – little things. Burns, scratches – stay with you for life, and you always remember where you got them. Like, I've got this mark on me,' he undid the top button of his shirt, pulled the material sideways, showed her a tiny pale scar on his left collar-bone. 'A guy I loved did that. We were fooling about – shaving each other, this one time, and he cut me. And the scar's still there. He gave me that to remember him by.'

'Mmm.' She nodded. 'I've still got a scar where my girlfriend pierced my nipple, once.'

She looked up, and the man is grinning slightly.

'I showed you mine...' he said.

She took a breath, acting resignation.

'For you, Harkness, that was almost subtle.' She drained her glass. 'Shall we get a room?'

 

* * *

 

With the familiarity of old lovers, they kissed once the door was shut. Neither is pouncing or aggressive – it's a slow, comfortable kiss, warth and affection behind it. He did pinch her bum, but not to shock or startle her – merely as an affectionate gesture, appreciative of her curves.

'So,' she said, when they disengaged. 'What do I get for a nipple?'

'Oh, we playing swaps now?'

She smiled. When she smiles, it sounds in her voice. 'Why not?'

'OK. Uh – I got – ' he reached his fingers up to the nape of his neck, experimentally – 'A felidae girl got a bit enthusiastic on me once, think you can still see it...'

She was sitting on the bed, and drew him to his knees in front or her, running a hand through his hair.

'What happened?' she asked.

'Well, she was fucking me – she had this strap-on, she liked that, she was into the butch thing – and she forgets she's dealing with a human and tries hanging onto the back of my neck with her teeth while she's screwing me – you know how felidae guys do?'

She nodded – she's played with the felidae too.

'So, she gets a bit worked up, breaks the skin. I felt – god, really vulnerable – but in a good way. Like being topped hard and that feeling of not knowing for sure you could get out of it. So I tell her, that's really good, and she keeps doing it. It looked really bad afterwards, but it all healed up, pretty much – except this one spot.' His voice grew muffled, she'd pulled his face close to her lap while she inspected the scar. It's barely noticable, a small, almost tringular cicatrice just at the verge of his hairline, where the hair was soft and very strokable. She stroked it, dipped her head – pressing his face against her leg so he coulds smell her scent – and kissed the mark, so gently it almost tickled.

'Mm'. A sigh that was almost a word.

'OK,' he sat back up. 'Nipple?'

He looked cutely expectant. Jack is very well attuned to her, and can usually get his way by being submissive and a bit cheeky. She lowered her eyelids.

'Ah, no, not yet.'

She took off the short flyer's jacket she wore, and rolled up the sleeve of her shirt.

'Here.' The smooth, milky-coffee tone of her bicep was interupted by a bump of dead white skin. Silgthly raised, with tiny lines crossing it, like miniature horizontal hatchings in the skin.

'First time I did knifeplay. The knife wasn't quite sharp enough. It was going to be a proper scarification but I wasn't in the right headspace, I called it off. We never finished it.'

He looked at it with interest. 'That's quite a mark.'

'It wasn't a very good knife.'

'Looks it. Reminds me of this time - ' he stopped.

'What?'

'No, that story comes after the nipple.'

'It's your turn,' she said, smoothly.

'Ok. Mmm. This one. Technically a war wound.' He undid his shirt, pushed it aside, and showed her a broad skim of pinkish tissue on his side – just where the indentation of his waist was deepest. 'Got kinda drunk one night on bootleg gin someone brewed up in camp – end up out on the dunes with this guy from the boonies. So he's younger than me, really shy til we get started, then – woah!' he grinned at the recollection. 'Pins me down by the wrists, rolls over on top of me, I land right onto this bit of shrapnel in the sand.'

'Ouch.'

'Yeah. After I'd got it patched up and dressed, we had another couple of fucks, but – hed gone off playing rough. Shame.'

She fignered the mark, lightly, stroking it with two finger tips. The fingers strayed over his side, up to the lap of his lower rib, down to his hip. Kneeling before her, he caught his breath. This intimacy felt more erotic – charged with long memories of other lovers, and slow revelations – than if they'd just fallen straight into bed.

'All right, your go.'

His eyes are all for her as she unbuttoned her shirt and stripped out of it. She's wearing a plain black bra, comfy and functional. He catches a breath of scent from her breasts and armpits – sweat and a vague perfume he can't place – something floral and understated.

'OK. My girlfriend – this is when I was twenty, twenty-one – was training as a piercer, so I let her do me. She pierced my nipple, one night, as part of a scene. I asked her to. And it was great – huge rush, it was amazing. Only – because I was really turned on – my nipple were very hard, and she pierced me too far in.' She unhooked her bra and shrugged it off, dropping the cups to reveal her broad, freckle-brown nipples. 'Once they went down, the piercing was too far back, in the aureola, not the nipple. So it never healed properly and I had to take it out after a bit. It scarred over, here, look.'

Jack had to lean in very close to see it properly. Almost on automatic, his other hand drifted up to her right breast and he stroked it, gently, with the backs of his fingers while he gazed at the scar – a raised bump either side of the nipple.

'Kinda hard to see,' he commented, still stroking her other breast, the tips of his knuckles just grazing her peaking nipple in passing. 'You're not turned on right now, by any chance?'

She smiled warmly down at him. 'Can't imagine why.'

He swallowed, leaned in and planted a careful, chaste litle kiss on her nipple, then pulled away. Her hand on the back of his neck stopped him. It was the first deliberate sign of arousal she'd shown, and it made him catch his breath.

'Why stop there?' she asked, nudging his head back in. Needing no more invitation, he kissed her again, this time with parted lips. Then a slow dart of his tongue over the tip of her breast, a careful flip with his lower lip, another kiss. He could keep doing this forever, but after a minute of very gentle teasing she gave a little shiver and nudged him off.

'Let's see your next one, then.'

He drew away with a slight sigh.

'Gonna need to take my pants off for this,' he said, standing up and half-turning away from her as he unbuttoned them. He was already hard, but the slow undressing made it feel awkward to show her that yet. He glanced over his shoulder once his trousers were off, grinnnig at her. She looked carefuly at his smooth, broad back, his muscled legs.

'Got this off a really fun scene.'  He twisted as if trying to see, feeling for it with his fingers. 'This girl I was with has a real thing from boots – speacially sharp stillettoes.'

River followed his fingers, found the scar – a roundish remnant of a puncture.

'So this one time, she's got me tied down on the floor, naked, and she's doing the whole super-dominatrix thing – bootheel on my butt, you know – and her fucking phone goes off! So she jumps, puts too much weight on it.'

'What did you do?'

'Yelled like a bastard.'

'Not surprised.'

She ran the pad of her thumb over it, then along the groove where his buttock intersected with the top of his thigh. Slipping her thumb gently under the material of his boxers, across the most sensitive spot, she traces and retraces the line. His cock twitched suddenly. Her thumb drew close to – but didn't quite touch – his perineum. He bit his lip, his eyes closing with excitement.

Her hand still moving, brushing his warm arse, she said, 'Want to see my last one?'

'Uh huh?' he managed. The teasing was making him ache to skip to the end, but this felt like a game they had to play out.

She got up, and turned her back on him.

'I never used to like these,' she said, unzipping her jeans in turn. 'But you're right. They're a sign of a life lived. Stretch-marks.'

Uh huh?' he said again, close behind her now.

She slipped her jeans and pants down together, and straightened up again, turning to look over her shoulder at him. 'From when I was a teenager. I had a terrific growth-spurt when I was sixteen, and it stretched the skin.' She traced her fingers down her lower back, over her gorgeous curvy bum and to her thighs. She showed him the fine, silvery lines, in the contoured patterns of a tide-washed beach, tracing over her.

'Used to hate them. But they are – kind of – unique. What do you think?' And there it was, for the first time all evening, a tiny hint of uncertainty, of insecurity. Jack recognises this, painfully clearly. He's never met a lover, however beautiful, who didn't have a tiny, nagging little worm of insecurity about some aspect of their body. He's never once, in all that time, found the thing that worried them anything other that alluring.

He knelt behind her, laid his hands very lightly on the peaks of her hips, and pressed his cheek for a moment on the small of her back. Then he kissed her, over her lower back and the small dint below her tailbone, pausing to find each silvery line and kiss it, lingeringly and lightly, with closed, careful lips. He kissed along the small of her back, then down across the curve of her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. Following the lines of her body, caressing, almost worshipping, the smooth pale impressions on her skin.

Above him, her head tilded up slightly, her lips parted. She stood, frozen, reassured, fully beautiful.

When the tension was too much – and Jack showed every sign of being willing to keep going indefinitely if she was enjoying it – she stepped away, turned to him. He knelt at her feet, raised his light-blue eyes to hers.

'Bed?'

'Oh, yeah.'

He got up – his hard-on now unconcealably tenting his boxers – and moved closer to her. Not quite touching, he breathed, 'I do have one more?'

'Oh yes? And where's that?' Her smile has faded – she looks almost sorrowful with intensity, staring up at him as if she wants him the most of everything she wants in the world.

He took her by the wrist, and led her to the bed. Stripping hastily of his boxers, he rolled down next to her – lounging companionably close to her. She curled up her legs, head cupped on one hand, watching him.

'Here.'  His fingers brushed his cock. 'There was this woman. Married.'

'Bad boy,' she said, swatting him playfully. He looked mock-contrite.

'Yeah, I know. But she had this diamond ring she always wore. So one day – we used to meet up in weird places and have very fast sex – so she's jerking me off, lots of lube – and man, she's really good at it, she's got the grip right, she's got me really close – and the lube makes her wedding-ring slip right round, and the diamond catches me - '

'Oooh!'

'Right there,' he said. It's a tiny sliver of paleness – not even a bump. Looking even more vulnerable, set in the smooth, soft skin of his cock – even when his cock is hard and thick, his foreskin drawn back, framing the tip. She wriggled down the bed to look at it properly, so close he could feel her breath on him. Then, with a quick lap, she ran her tongue over him – a playful swipe that made him rock suddenly.

'Oh - '

'Mmm.' She looked up, smiling again. 'I'll do you, then you do me?'

'Nah,' he said. 'I wanna do you first.'

'Such a gentleman,' she said, allowing him to roll down the bed.

 

END


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